1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to storage devices and in particular to left luggage lockers for use in, for example, railway stations, airports and shopping centres.
2. Related Art
Traditional luggage lockers have typically comprised a number of individual lockers, perhaps of varying sizes to accommodate different sizes and shapes of luggage, each locker typically having a separate lock, handle and coin operated mechanism.
Insertion of a coin, or coins into the coin operated mechanism allows a customer to open the locker, place their luggage inside, lock the locker and remove the key. These traditional lockers are labour intensive to maintain because, for example, there are a lot of separate coin mechanisms to empty.
Recent developments of this traditional system have focused on the possibilities of having an automatic central control point, where all the money for the operation of the lockers is collected, which controls the operation of a number of lockers and where the traditional keys are replaced with magnetic cards which when inserted in a locker act as keys. These magnetic cards are also dispensed form this central control point.
Examples of such systems are disclosed in the following European Patents and Patent Applications.
European Patent No. 6403 describes a system whereby a central control unit controls the operation of a large number of lockers. The locker to be used by a particular customer is selected by the central control unit, and not by the customer himself, and thus, if the lockers are of different sizes, or stacked up in columns, it takes no account of the size of luggage to be placed in the locker selected by the central control unit nor does it take account of the customer's ability to place the luggage in the locker, particularly if the locker selected by the central control unit is placed at the top of a column of a number of lockers.
European Patent No. 65,605 describes a locker system having one control unit for each column of lockers, each control unit having hexadecimal coding wheels to identify each locker in the column. This system is both expensive, since a large number of control units are required if more than one column of lockers is used, which will be commonly the case particularly in busy airports, for example. In addition the mechanical coding wheels will tend to be less reliable than electronic systems.
A European Patent Application No. 334 726 also describes a locker system having a central control unit. In this case the customer has to enter a personal secret code number, which he composes, into the central control unit when depositing his luggage. This personal secret code number must then be re-entered to gain access to the luggage. This has obvious disadvantages in that the customers, if the fails to remember his personal secret code numbers will be unable to gain access to his luggage.
One further feature of previously known locker systems is that the individual lockers all have handles on them to allow them to be opened and are generally kept shut to even when empty. These can be awkward to use particularly if the customer has luggage in both hands which he wishes to place in the selected locker. The customer is thus forced to place his luggage down to operate the handle and open the locker selected.